"Something We Almost Hoped For: A Review of Lory Bedikian's 'Jagadakeer: Apology to the Body' by Eva Kraus

          Jagadakeer: Apology to the Body is a collection of poems written by Lory Bedikian, a Los-Angeles-based author who has two published books, including The Book of Lamenting, which won the Philip Levine Prize in Poetry, and this, her second, which won the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and is a remarkable set of poems that acts as a discussion of life, death — and what is left after it. She addresses this masterfully through the lens of her own life and experiences.
          Bedikian’s ability to bring the reader through the circumstances in her life is just a part of what makes this book a unique read. The writing transcends time, space, and perspective. Many of the poems move from memories of the past to moments in the hospital dealing with illness, to moments after death, full of grief. In Issue Four (Fall 2019) of MORIA Literary Magazine, we published the poem “Broccoli,” which also appears in her new book. It is a spectacular example of her ability to give us smooth transitions. In this poem, the reader is taken on a roller-coaster ride from her present-day grief to moments of struggle in the hospital with her mother, to moments of bittersweet reminiscence of the past — all using broccoli as a tool to do so. This is just one example of the many ways Bedikian writes so creatively throughout the book:

that small green tree
barely steamed, barely a tree, more like small

stubbornness in the form of vegetable,
its stalk of vitamin and two thousand years,

its powers something you almost despise
until I tell you it will help. Help. Help you . . .

MORIA also published the poem “Last Testament” in that issue, which likewise appears in the book.
One concept delicately and thoughtfully sprinkled across the pages is Bedikian’s play on words. She truly takes control of the words on the page and lets them act as puppets to dance out her story. Words are picked precisely and organized in clever and creative ways I have not seen before. I would like to highlight some examples of her wording that stuck out to me while reading this book, including “If ghosts still have feelings, / then I better watch what I say” (p. 17, ll. 16-17). I love the way this sentence insinuates that even after the death of a loved one, you still must carry the difficult aspects of your relationship with them and be watchful of how you think and speak about them, through the idea of the ghost having feelings. Here is another example: “Your integrity is the disposed syringe” (p. 50, ll. 9-10). Bedikian’s choice of words is so fascinating in this line, and I have never heard anything like it before, which suggests human character as disposable through this imagery. The last example I would like to highlight is “We watch what we think is hesitance / as its long legs enter the stream’s edge” (p. 52, ll. 1-2). Once again, she chooses to use a metaphor — that of a water bug, in this case — to suggest human behavior. As opposed to saying how she feels directly, she makes her story a work of art by adding moments of wordplay like these.
Another powerful element of Bedikian’s work, and one that I would argue is among the biggest motivators for it, is her identity as an Armenian-American, coming from an immigrant family. Part of her wordplay throughout the pieces includes integrating words and phrases from the Armenian language into the poems. This speaks to her work as a testament to who she is and what she believes. A lot of the themes coming from these Armenian moments revolve around struggling with identity as a person in an immigrant family, coping with bittersweet parental relationships, and trying to keep culture and memories alive despite being halfway around the world now. The first word in the book’s title, Jagadakeer, is an Armenian word that means “the writing on your forehead” and symbolizes the destiny, or fate, of your life. Bedikian has a beautiful poem in the book that goes deeper into the meaning and explains why it is significant to her.
Another theme that is present in these poems is about finding the intersection between the beauty and pain of memory. There are so many memories of the past that are beautiful, but there are also difficult ones that create a bittersweet complexity within the mind. The loss of loved ones adds an even greater complexity to these emotions, and Bedikian writes about them so that the reader feels a spectrum. In the poem “Zevart, Ode to Joy,” Bedikian begins by talking about the loss of her mother and about the “poison” of the family. It cuts to moments in the hospital with her mother, learning that she does not have much life left:

Zevart of my birth, a name I will not
simplify for them. Let them say it.
Zevart. Zevart of rose petal jam & calluses,
your mother, a desert walk, her mother
hovering above sheep’s brain stew,
Zevart. Zevart. All I have left
of my first blurred sight. All that’s
left of my own name, its song —

The next section of the poem talks about moments in her relationship with her father, referencing the past with a mixture of different memories. That poem perfectly encapsulates the experience of reflecting on memories and tough relationships with parents.
Something Bedikian starts speaking to at the end of the book is her experience with her own troubles. Struggles with grief and identity are present across the different poems, but towards the end we learn about her own medical problems that create a stark reflection of the medical issues she had to live through from her closest family members. As a reader, you can see how much her heritage and her family’s culture have made her the woman and writer she is today. She has taken her identity and made it a staple of her work which adds a beautiful layer to the book. The most powerful section of this piece is the very last section which goes as follows:

If I rub limestone and chalk
between my fingers, create a fury
resembling my missing you
can I reach the top of the anticline
the mountains between you
and mother, before you met
can I clarify why we never became
what we set out to be?

This set of lines truly summarizes the themes of Bedikian’s Jagadakeer: Apology to the Body in the way they try, and fail, to alchemize the past and bring it back, but there is so much more within her work that you should read for yourself — Issue 15 (Spring 2025) of MORIA offers three more poems of hers for you to consider: “Emergency Poem-Prayer for My Brother,” “Fish & Quips,” and “Critical Care.”

Eva Kraus

Eva served as Submissions Editor for MORIA’s Issue 15 (Spring 2025). She was born and raised in Los Angeles and is a Psychology major and a Professional Writing minor at Woodbury University, where she is also a member of the Honors Program.